S.3 Episode 9: Tomatoes, Crickets, and Heads of Lettuce?

I was with Microsoft for 13 years came into the program to change the world at Microsoft with food. I was able to do that. We had some good times and some bad times along the way, but for the most part it came out really well. The thing about Microsoft is they are using food as every tech company is using food, to be able to attract the best and the brightest. They invest a lot of money in the food program to be able to attract and retain. The kids that are coming out of college they are not looking to come to a company that they will stay a long time, they are looking for the Big Bang and a lot of that has to deal with food. In college mom and dad picked up the bill so it was free food and you come to work and your expectations are high around that. At Microsoft we didn’t have free food. We were big on food waste so the idea of paying for food you make decisions differently than you would with having it be free. For the most part we were able to maintain that in the Bay Area where there is a competition for workers.

I did a lot with this idea of becoming a profit center vs a cost center. We got into a lot of crazy things, growing our own food hydroponically. I had some grow towers that we put out in the cafe and our digital geniuses that worked there saw it and wanted to digitize it. We had our grow towers connected to the cloud and we were monitoring them with a surface tablet. The cool thing about that is they were growing in the office space, as you were doing your work next to you lettuce was growing.